Processing empty categories: A parallel approach

In many current theories of human sentence processing, the mechanisms and principles proposed to account for data related to processing (1) long-distance dependencies and (2) structural ambiguities, such as garden-path sentences, are independent, despite the fact that deciding whether or not to posit a gap is just a special case of ambiguity resolution. In this paper we demonstrate how the parallel parsing theory proposed by Gibson (1991, in press)—which was developed to account for nongap ambiguity resolution data—also explains a number of gap-positing facts, without additional strategies. In particular, we show how this theory correctly explains filled-object-gap effects and the lack of filled-subject-gap effects in English, as well as certain gap-processing effects in Dutch.     

MUST FIGURE-GROUND ORGANIZATION PRECEDE OBJECT RECOGNITION?

The assumption that figure-ground segmentation must precede object or shape recognition has been central to theories of visual perception We showed that assumption to be incorrect in an experiment in which observers reported the first perceived figure–ground organization of briefly exposed stimuli depicting two regions sharing a figure–ground border We manipulated the symmetry of the two regions and their orientation-dependent denotivity (roughly, their meaningfulness), and measured how each of these variables influenced figure–ground reports when the stimuli were exposed for 14, 28, 57, 86, or 100 ms, and followed immediately by a mask Influences on figure–ground organization from both symmetry and orientation-dependent object recognition processes were found, both were observed first in the 28-ms condition Object recognition inputs did not dominate symmetry inputs We suggest that object recognition processes may operate simultaneously on both sides of edges detected before figure–ground relationships are determined     

Development of the perception of invariants: substance and shape

Three experiments investigated the perception of substance and shape as invariant properties of objects by three-month-old infants. In experiment 1, infants were habituated to two differently shaped objects undergoing a rigid motion. After habituation of the infants, the objects were presented undergoing a different rigid motion, or undergoing a deforming motion, or undergoing the same rigid motion. Habituation was maintained to the new rigid motion, indicating that the two rigid motions were perceived as sharing an invariant property. Dishabituation, on the other hand, occurred when a deforming motion followed a rigid one. In experiment 2, infants were habituated to one shape undergoing two different rigid motions. After habituation, the shape was changed but the same two motions continued. Dishabituation occurred, compared to a group with no shape change, indicating that shape is distinguished as an invariant property over two rigid motions. In experiment 3, habituation to a shape undergoing two rigid motions was followed by a new shape presented motionless, or the same shape presented motionless. Cessation of motion did not prevent recognition of shape as invariant. Two properties of an object, substance and shape, thus appear to be detectable as invariant in an event sequence, an instance of "phenomenal doubling" at an early age.     

Does partisan media make a pawn of mistrust? Institutional trust and preventive COVID-19 health behaviors in a polarized pandemic

In a rapidly developing crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, people are often faced with contradictory or changing information and must determine what sources to trust. Across five time points (N = 5902) we examine how trust in various sources predicts COVID-19 health behaviors. Trust in experts and national news predicted more engagement with most health behaviors from April 2020 to March 2022 and trust in Fox news, which often positioned itself as counter to the mainstream on COVID-19, predicted less engagement. However, we also examined a particular public health behavior (masking) before and after the CDC announcement recommending masks on 3 April 2020 (which reversed earlier expert advice discouraging masks for the general public). Prior to the announcement, trust in experts predicted less mask-wearing while trust in Fox News predicted more. These relationships disappeared in the next 4 days following the announcement and reversed in the 2 years that follow, and emerged for vaccination in the later time points. We also examine how the media trusted by Democrats and Republicans predicts trust in experts and in turn health behaviors. Broadly we consider how the increasingly fragmented epistemic environment has implications for polarization on matters of public health.     

The protective role of social network factors during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States

The present study examined the relationship between COVID-19 threat perception, isolating health precautions, and loneliness. As a test of the stress-buffering hypothesis (Cohen & Wills, 1985), this study also examined if social network factors representing various aspects of social support moderated, or weakened, the relationship between threat perception, isolating health precautions, and loneliness. Participants (N = 1149) provided information about themselves, as well as 15 other people they know via an online survey. We found that structural and compositional social network factors, density, number of close alters, network threat perception, network covid cautiousness and number of vaccinated alters all negatively related to loneliness. Further, using moderated mediation analyses, we found that network threat perception and network covid cautiousness moderated the indirect relationship between threat perception and loneliness through precautions. At high levels of these factors, the mediation was less likely to be significant suggesting that the social network factors may buffer people from the loneliness that sometimes comes with engaging in isolating health precautions in response to the perceived threat of COVID-19.     

A plausible role of imagination in pretend play,counterfactual reasoning,and executive functions

A notable observation is the similarities in the cognitive processes of pretend play (PP) and counterfactual reasoning (CFR) as both involve thinking about alternatives to reality. It is argued by Weisberg and Gopnik (Cogn. Sci., 37, 2013, 1368) that alternative thinking in PP and CFR is underpinned by an imaginary representational capacity but few studies have empirically investigated this link. We use a variable latent modelling approach to test a hypothetical model of the structural relationship of PP and CFR predicting that if PP and CFR are cognitively similar; they should have similar patterns of associations with Executive Functions (EFs). Data were collected on PP, CFR, EFs and Language from 189 children (M = 4.8 years, males = 101, females = 88). Confirmatory factor analyses showed that measures of PP and CFR loaded onto single latent constructs and were significantly correlated (r = .51, p = .001) with each other. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that EF accounted for unique significant variance in both PP (β = 21) and CFR (β = 22). The results of the structural equation modelling revealed that the data were a good fit for the hypothetical model. We discuss the plausible role of a general underlying imaginative representational capacity to explain similarities in the cognitive mechanisms of different states of alternative thinking like PP and CFR.     

Taming Uncivil Discourse

In an era of seemingly intense populist politics, a variety of issues of intergroup prejudice, discrimination, and conflict have moved center stage in much of the industrialized world. Among these is “political correctness” and, in particular, what constitutes a legitimate discourse of political and social conflict and opposition. Yet the meaning of legitimate discourse is being turned on its head as some disparaged groups seek to reclaim, or reappropriate, slurs directed against them. Using as a context a U.S. Supreme Court case about whether “The Slants”—a band named after a traditional slur against Asians—can trademark its name, we test several hypotheses about reappropriation processes based on a nationally representative sample with an oversample of East Asian Americans and several survey experiments. We find that motives attributions influence how people understand and evaluate potentially disparaging words. In particular, when reappropriation motives are perceived, insulting words are judged to be less insulting. In this sense, uncivil discourse can to some degree be tamed.     

Lossy-Context Surprisal: An Information-Theoretic Model of Memory Effects in Sentence Processing

A key component of research on human sentence processing is to characterize the processing difficulty associated with the comprehension of words in context. Models that explain and predict this difficulty can be broadly divided into two kinds, expectation-based and memory-based. In this work, we present a new model of incremental sentence processing difficulty that unifies and extends key features of both kinds of models. Our model, lossy-context surprisal, holds that the processing difficulty at a word in context is proportional to the surprisal of the word given a lossy memory representation of the context—that is, a memory representation that does not contain complete information about previous words. We show that this model provides an intuitive explanation for an outstanding puzzle involving interactions of memory and expectations: language-dependent structural forgetting, where the effects of memory on sentence processing appear to be moderated by language statistics. Furthermore, we demonstrate that dependency locality effects, a signature prediction of memory-based theories, can be derived from lossy-context surprisal as a special case of a novel, more general principle called information locality.     

Individual differences in sentence memory

Results from an experiment with two parts are presented in this paper. In part one, participants listened to sentences containing two, three, four, or five clauses, and were asked questions about the content of the sentences. The results of part one demonstrate that an important unit of representation in sentence memory is the clause, and not some other component of discourse structure. In part two, the same group of participants performed eight different short-term storage/working memory tasks. A composite complex span score was computed for each participant based on three working memory tasks closely based on Daneman & Carpenter's (1980) reading span task. This working memory measure was significantly correlated with the participants' performance on the sentence memory task in part one. A second working memory measure—N-back—was also significantly correlated with the participants' performance on the sentence memory task, and there was no correlation between their performance on the complex span task and the N-back task. It is therefore concluded that (i) working memory consists of a number of dissociable components; and (ii) memory for sentences taps into more than one of these working memory components. Furthermore, the high correlations of sentence memory with the complex span and the N-back tasks (neither of which are language processing tasks) suggests that memory for sentences is not simply a result of linguistic experience; rather, it is likely that an independent working memory component contributes to participants' performance on the sentence memory task.